My Eternal Crawl
by ScourgeOfTheWastes
Summary: Slithering through the tragic wreckage of the fallen metropolis of Rapture, I, alone, look for a way out - but all I can find are dead ends...
1. Chapter 1

Footsteps echoed loudly, quickly, down a long, lonely tunnel; the only background sound filling the empty space around each malevolent step was the constant dripping of a hundred sprung leaks - some dribbling oceanwater across the thick glass panes of darkened windows, others gushing vehemently into the stairwells and cracks of every blackened corner.

I saddled up to the darkness, back flush against the wall and felt the cold, unforgiving embrace of steel along my spine. I tried vainly to listen around the pounding rhythm of my own heartbeat exploding in my ears.

Manic laughter, giddy and insane with violence, floated lazily along a rushing current of stale air; its gnarled old fingers encircled my neck. I silenced a dry choke as it arose in my throat.

It, _this freakish creature no longer human_, suddenly ran screaming in my direction with the edge of a lead pipe screeching along the stone floor tiles. A white-hot plume of molten sparks fizzled in his eccentric wake.

I clutched the busted wrench at my side and inhaled sharply, waiting to die.

* * *

Alone.

I was all alone.

In a city of thousands.

Most of them were dead now… or half-alive, long past a shadow of their former selves. My skin crawls at the mindless tinny of every shriek - every sobbing, hysterical cry; the way they talk to themselves aloud, frantic and paranoid in the solitary hours of what could be midnight, could be fucking noon for all I know… not much sunlight reaches down here.

I have constant goosebumps, my mouth is always a desert; I will never get used to this place.

Yet I must ask myself: who doesn't secretly enjoy the metallic, bittersweet taste of dead dreams? The death of Rapture left such a deliciously tart flavor on my lips... but it never occurred to me that I was tasting my own blood.

Lights still glow from vacant rooms in abandoned high-rises; the thumping mechanical heart of the city still pumps in the industrial hell they call Hephaestus; trees still blossom, wither and die in the grassy fields of Arcadia; Dr. Steinman's forsaken patients paint a trilogy of sorrow, stigmata clogged with coagulated blood as his body rots aside their unholy altar; forty-seven murdered souls beg for their release behind masks of plaster in the mausoleum of Fort Frolic.

I, alone, look for a way out - but all I can find are dead ends.

* * *

All around me shakes - the walls, the floors, the ceiling - every beam and bolt and corpse in a quarter-mile radius shudders.

A massive mechanical groan slithers down one of Rapture's many spiral arms,...

_I scream._


	2. Chapter 2

She didn't hear me; thank God or the Devil or Buddha or Allah, she didn't hear me.

His head just popped, like a cherry. Bile threatened to surface in the arid pit of my throat, and I look away.

Another one crawled out of the wall, taking off in an awkward gait like a giant spider across the ceiling. Red-hot hooks glowed in its mutated hands. The bloody little girl in the blue and white dress pointed to the wall and yelled to her growling bodyguard.

"Unzip him, Daddy! _**UNZIP HIM!**_"

The wall-walker dropped from the ceiling and landed lightly on his feet in a crouched fighting stance, clearly under the misconception that he could take on this humongous, lumbering scuba-bastard.

I watched in surreal slow-motion as the roaring conical drill of the beast's right arm exploded through his chest. The splicer's mouth dropped open, blood bubbling out from both gaping holes in a gushing maroon torrent; it was still spinning,... so much blood,... _**ohmygodsomuchblood**_... _it was still spinning in his chest cavity_...

An agonizing wail split the air - that final, familiar cry of the dying I've heard so many times now.

Then,

_silence_.

* * *

Its footsteps were mostly muted now, far and away like a bad dream, so I finally allowed myself to breathe. I had almost forgotten how.

Peering out from the black chasm of my hiding spot, the entire room before me was stained a deep crimson with fresh blood; chunks of human meat and slaughtered bodies littered the floor like just another night in Rapture,... as if the dead were nothing more than decor.

I want to say it disgusts me, and I feel that muffled revulsion stretch across my innards - but slowly, surely, I become desensitized. With each passing hour, I blend further into this mindless mausoleum - this new, fantastical, grotesque reality. Violence has somehow become peace, and its absence leaves me more terrified than its wake.

I creep along the furthest wall, a parasite in anxious thigmotaxis (as Andrew Ryan would have certainly surmised) and glanced nervously down a damp, winding corridor. Glass windows on all sides of me reveal the majesty of the inner city. The constantly shifting glow of Rapture's downtown district bending to the whim of the sea's relentless tempo gave little indication of its utter failure.

In these rare moments of calm, fleeing from one decaying corner of the city to another, I often find myself gazing lovingly along its proud skyline, thinking of all that could have been.

* * *

I fumbled furiously with the faulty wiring of a vending machine, my hands sweaty and trembling. If I overloaded the system, I'd only walk away with one bright hell of a shock and an instantly-activated alarm, triggering a cloud of flying turret bots with mounted automatics and angry, all-seeing eyes. Surely I would be no match with just my wits about me and a crude plumber's tool.

"Shit, _shit_, **_SHIT_**," I stammered breathlessly as wave after wave of heat crashed upon my skin. More sweat beaded, then ran freely, trickling into every crevice of my body like rainwater finding rivulets in narrow, barren places.

A soft click, the pleasant, crunching grind of rusted gears and a brief electric pulse were just the signs I needed to know that I had successfully hacked the machine. With a _WOOSH_ of relief I lowered my head, rejoicing quietly to myself.

To my dispair, I had only $64 to my name - all looted from the tragic leftovers of former neighbors and friends - so I had no choice but to stock up on the few First Aid Kits I could afford.

As I stood to leave and resume my eternal crawl, I took notice of an old-fashioned machine gun resting against the lifeless hand of its former owner. I bent down to see if any ammo was left, careful to avoid the veritable organic stew of blood and guts around me.

The clip was half full, so I gleefully pocketed the wrench and held the tommy gun in my hands, almost as if to ensure it was real. A tear unexpectedly slipped from the corner of my left eye. Maybe I could, in fact, make it out of here alive. In past weeks I had vainly tried to come to humble terms with my fate: sealed in the most beautiful undersea tomb, dying alongside my demented family. What I had found in the aftermath of massacre was a trace inkling of hope.

The muzzle's cold steel winked at me in the reflection of the flickering lights of Olympus Heights.

Fear had been my shadow; violence would be my only salvation.


	3. Chapter 3

Caked to the walls, dripping from the musty air - the smell of fish long dead and long rotting invaded each nostril, one at a time, filling every vacant gap in my aching head. I licked at my painfully cracked lips, tasting the putrid fragrance of Fontaine's Fishery.

Fontaine - that greedy, bald old fuck,... he had once the body of a human, you see, but at the time of his befitting end, he was an ADAM-shitting, hulking mutant tyrant. His green carcass was last seen somewhere above the Big Daddy Proving Grounds, festering beneath the scummy ends of a dozen Little Sister syringes. I've heard whispers that he was quite literally torn to pieces by ADAM scavengers; not much of him remains.

And rightfully so.

The newcomer who put Fontaine in his place just so happened to be the prodigal son of Andrew Ryan; Ryan too met his maker, sporting the blunt-end of a nine-iron straight through the crown of his skull. It was truly a shame, now that I think of it - he was something of a hero to me at one time…. _to all of us_. Ryan had only good intensions, but oft it is said that the road to hell is paved with them. Of this, I am a believer now.

All things considered, though, it was his people who failed him. The ego generally succeeds in devouring itself unabated, but Fontaine had only encouraged its demise while in the pursuit of Andrew Ryan's very philosophy. With the widening gap between classes and blue-collar Joes upholding the giants of science and art (as the city literally pissed and shit where the poor bastards slept), civil war and serious social discourse were the only possible outcomes. Fontaine was so determined to yank on Ryan's 'great chain' and lay claim to what was essentially his, he had molded Ryan's only child into a clueless conduit, obedient on all counts when exposed to the right keywords. Just before Jack arrived with vengeance at hand, Ryan had connected the dots and autonomously chose his own ending: it was at his very command that his own son bludgeoned him to death.

I can say with great certainly that Andrew Ryan is the only man I'll ever know who truly lived and died for what he believed in. I, too, will die down here – but whether I die a coward or a killer has yet to be seen.

Now that both of Rapture's 'leaders' are pushing up daisies, the city would have little choice but to continue its imminent downward spiral into the dismal abyss of spliced-up anarchy. I've learned to survive as most rats and cockroaches do, but what kind of life is skulking among the dead, seeking out every crack and shadow in this forgotten labyrinth? Jack Ryan had fled to the surface with Dr. Brigid Tannenbaum and a small army of rescued Little Sisters, but the scent of his trail had been quickly washed away; I've no clue through what hole in the city they slipped.

Setting aside my continual philosophical conundrum, I crossed the ground level to the opposite end, approaching the other dock and a hallway which hopefully led to some [_temporary_] exit. Cautiously, I crept past the face-down body of a dead splicer, surrounded in a dim halo of murky water. A Little Sister was singing ominously around the corner up ahead; her haunting song sent a flood of chills down my arms - every hair on my body stood in silent terror. Her voice was set to a soundtrack of Big Daddy movements: the way the whole city shakes under their boots, that fucking sonar snarl,… whoever dreamt up these damn things gave birth to one hell of a nightmare. I stopped short in my tracks, petrified for an unnerving instant.

A light suddenly began swinging in the rafters overhead, rapidly, and the bulb blew dramatically. A shower of broken glass rained down from the ceiling. I crouched lower, hands flying to cover my head, and a shrill scream tore across the room. Bullet shells wrote a lead symphony as they struck the floor above me.

_I had been spotted._

* * *

"You _**BITCH**_!" shouted the tortured voice from above. Her aim was rendered completely awry by her wreckless, emotional tantrum; I was able to scramble to the opposite loading dock while narrowly avoiding a spray of haphazard shots.

"You fucking bitch! Give me…. give me,… **I _NEED_ your hair!"** She broke down in gasping sobs and the gun clattered noisily at her deformed feet. This miserable wretch began grasping wildly at what remained of her hair, ensnared her blistered, bloody fingers in a few disheveled clumps and began yanking them out with deranged abandon. A few tufts floated down to the floor. I watched from the shadows with what I can only describe as horrified, amused pity.

"Where… where did she go?… _**GET BACK HERE!**_"

I held my breath as she hurriedly paced from one ledge to another, biting nervously at her shredded fingernails. Her eyes darted to and fro like a rabid animal lost in rage.

The splicer then paused, looking through and beyond the milky windows.

"She left… _she left she left she left she left_," the woman moaned defeatedly. Her staunch, searching gaze softened and she buried her face in her hands, weeping deliriously.

"I used to be beautiful,… what happened… _what happened to me?"_ she questioned the dark, empty warehouse through an expression wrenched in grief and tinged with remorse. Her face – at one time stunning, now riddled with tumors and sheathed quite literally in blood, sweat and tears - glistened in the low light of the loading dock. It was as though she had briefly returned from the precipice of perpetual self-destruction and was in mourning of the woman she used to be.

New cracks began forming in my already-broken heart, and an undulating wave of nausea eroded in my stomach. Listening to her disturbing inner monologue made me wonder - _am I the last rational resident of Rapture_? A sob threatened to escape from my chest at the mere thought.

_Does this lost soul truly expect a response, or does a small part of her remain aware – that she is all alone, as am I, as we all are… and always will be?_

As if in answer, the spliced-up starlet rose to her feet. Her hands waved frantically in disdain at no one in particular. "You think I'm _CHEAP_?" she snarled, and ran a ragged sleeve beneath her dripping nose. "I'm worth something! _**I'M WORTH EVERY FUCKING PENNY!**_"

I cringed and backed away, sliding further into the shade beneath the loading dock. She leaned over the edge and immediately glanced in my direction.

"_**YOU HEAR ME COHEN?**_" Her voice reverberated across the room several times; each time it struck my ringing ears, the words were somehow a little more warped than before.

A new set of footsteps, deliberate and intolerant to bullshit, broke apart the irrational cacophony - and to my relief, revoked her attention from my place of hiding. She turned to face him.

"What, _what_, _**WHAT?**_ What's all this shouting, _you crazy fucking __**woman**__?_" The man sporting a disheveled, blood-stained business suit stepped into the spotlight and looked around, examining the room for the source of her unbridled insanity.

"It's my part! MINE! I deserve it, _you fuck!_"

A disgusted grunt was followed quickly by a haughty scoff. "Woman, you're a goddamn _has-been_," he stated matter-'o-factly, in the most condescending manner he could muster. "Look at this dump. _Nothin' left but nothin'!_ And _**YOU**_ think you're entitled to it?" He threw his head back and laughed; it was a joyless, callous laugh.

"This is _my_ territory." He tapped his chest with the barrel-end of his tommy gun. "There's a reason I'm still around,… because I'm the fuckin' best!"

A rumble emanated from her throat and she spat a terrific loogie at his feet. Phlegm gobbed along the muddy lining of his shoes; he skittered backwards in animated repugnance.

"I'm a star, not you! You're jealous,… _**JEALOUS**_!" Her excited shrieks once again bounced back and forth from dock to dock like some ridiculous game of pong, and my sympathy for her psychotic plight quickly waned.

Gun-fire erupted on the second floor, and I took this as my signal to vacate. While the two splicers danced the dance of drug-induced delusion, I ran in a crouching sprint up the loading ramp and towards the general direction of the Bathysphere station.

"I'm top dog, you shit! _**GET OUTTA MY FUCKIN' OFFICE!**_"

Bullets ricocheted and scattered noisily amongst the sudden chaos. A deep growl, muffled but rising in pitch, filtered into the dock area from the hallway. Timidly, a Little Sister with feral, glowing yellow eyes peered around the corner.

"_I don't like it, Daddy, I don't like it!_" Her words were water-logged with oncoming tears. Daddy didn't seem to like this either.

The amber of his many eyes intensified from an orange gradient to a warning red. Its incredible silhouette emerged from the thick darkness of the doorway. His drill spun faster, louder, flecking residual blood all across his broad chest.

Upon making his grand entrance, the splicers stopped shooting at one another and looked down to the loading dock area. Even in the dim glow, I could see their faces scrawled with a mix of equal parts surprise and dread.

His growl then grew into an ear-splitting sonic roar, the frequency of which caused individual teeth to chatter and vibrate in my skull. He raised one massive boot and stomped the floor, sending cracks like asteroid-impact ejecta rays spiraling outwards in fractals across the ground.

Immobile, still as a stone statue, I was locked in place by the sheer power of the monster's movements. My muscles were screaming, neurons firing off frantically, but not a single cell replied. I was caught in the throes of fantastic, frozen panic - the likes of which just about suffocated me.

My gaze met the barrel of his gun and I just about pissed myself.


	4. Chapter 4

The Big Daddy rushed not upon me, but past me. Dent marks sprung up all over its suit; headstrong, he took off in a lithe run towards the edge of the dock. His skill and agility were something not to simply admire, but to humbly and respectfully fear.

Taking aim, he fired several proximity mines up onto the second floor, two of which landed alongside one another and detonated instantly. A body (whether dead or alive, I could not tell) tumbled clumsily over the ledge of the second floor and landed with a sickening thud, directly atop the corpse in the [_dead_] center of the room.

"_**Fuck you**_, _fatty!_" Several clips were unloaded in our direction from the Upper Wharf, mostly to no avail.

Once more, the beast roared like an active volcano; he launched another proximity mine, this one right into the plasmid-junkie's face. Poor fucker didn't even have time to scream – he was immediately blown to pieces. A thick shower of blood and remains blanketed the two of us; my shoulders, arms and hair became slathered in mortal, dripping viscera.

The Big Daddy and I looked at each other – I imagined him to be wearing a horrific, toothy, entrail-laden smile at that moment under his bulky mask - and I promptly unloaded the contents of my own guts in a hot gush of vomit all over the floor. Puke dripped down between the rotted wood planks as a slight wisp of steam rose into the air.

"_DIE! You monster!_" The starlet splicer yelled, reappearing in the hallway through which I had been trying to flee. Her tommy gun lit up and thundered behind a hail of gunfire. With all these fucking interruptions and murders going on, I had completely forgotten about the Little Sister, who hid herself under the dock (and was probably decorated in the meager contents of my stomach); she scrambled beneath my feet in restless terror and squealed loudly.

"Kill it! _Kill it Daddy!_"

With no time to think I did an awkward tuck-and-roll, smashing into a heap of smuggling crates. Wood splinters popped and exploded all around me amidst a deluge of wasted ammo.

Now, I know what you must be thinking – 'what a _**pussy**__'_. In a sense, I suppose that sentiment is both appropriate and warranted. I assure you, however, that my retreat was not strictly out of fear (or at least, fear was not the catalyst); ammo conservation was in fact the name of the game, and I was in no position to be a gambling motherfucker. I knew I could remove myself from the situation and allow the Big, Bad Daddy to handle Rapture's population control. As always, he did not disappoint.

Daddy did what Daddy does best – he drill-rushed the bitch and skewered her. The ensuing, gut-wrenching screams left imprints in my ear canals, only adding to the memories of carnage – all of which I was certain to revisit in black dreams the next time I slipped into a precious few minutes of sleep.

In what was almost humorous gesture, the Big Daddy tried to push the lifeless splicer off his drill. She wouldn't budge. He began shaking his arm, causing her limp limbs to flail about like a morbid ragdoll.

To say I was traumatized, not just from the previous events, but from the past half year of my life would be a gross understatement. Something in my brain finally physically snapped and I was overcome with inane laughter; it rose from the empty hollow of my core like a geyser. But shortly after it had come upon me, the hilarity morphed into hysterics. I sank to my knees and wept, and wept, and _wept_, grief-stricken and wracked with exhausted anguish.

I had seen so much death, I wore it now, like a badge of honor - a girl scout's fucking survival trophy, the very insides of my sisters and brothers – _now my enemies_.

* * *

Her dying cries rattled and rang within the chamber of my skull, wailing onward, incessantly; I could do nothing. I remember banging at my temples, covering my ears with the red-stained palms of my hands, my own voice screaming to shut hers out.

I faintly recall that amber glow, the whirring drone of his drill. Explosions in the distance.

_All that blood._

My eyes burst open, and I found that I was in fact, screaming.

Alone.


	5. Chapter 5

Fontaine's Fishery was empty and dark; the battle long over, the survivors long gone.

The opaque haze of hopeless sleep distorted my vision, as it did my hearing. The world was blurry, watery, hostile… every return from its black precipice was an ironic reflection of what is now everyday life.

I propped myself up on my elbows and rubbed my tired eyes, unsure of how long I had laid there; I only knew that I positively reeked of death.

Quick flashes of nightmare recollections stole away my surroundings, reminding me of why I had shouted myself awake. In the desperate clutches of a very brief REM state, I had seen and heard the splicers die once again - the only lucid audience to their last breaths.

_I really fucking hate being right all the time._

As reality set back in, the images rolled away like an eerie fog. I ambled listlessly up onto my feet, careful not to draw too much attention to myself should any rivals remain. Motionless, I waited.

Only one sound broke the everlasting stillness.

_**Drip. **_

_**Drip. **_

_**Drip.**_

The quiet was incredibly loud; it left me terribly uneasy, despite the fact that I was more likely to hear enemies oncoming. Without looking back, I disappeared through the doorway and made my way towards the Bathysphere station. The hallway was lined with old wooden crates and skeletons; all they wore now was a few tattered remnants of fabric beneath a colorful carpet of mold.

"Fill your cravings at the Circus of Value!" an obnoxious clown announced from up ahead. In immediate response, a white-hot surge of panic rushed over and through me, until I realized it was just another vending machine.

"_Fucking clown_," I muttered to myself nervously and tried to laugh - but it sounded quite similar to the rattling of bones.

A thin veil of seawater at the end of the hall was parted as I passed through it; it washed away some of the gore which still clung to my clothes. Realizing how long it had been since I last showered, I stepped backwards and hovered gratefully within it for some time. Despite its frigid temperature, the water was a welcome relief to the stinking sheath of violence I had been wearing.

I emerged drenched and freezing, but feeling somewhat refreshed. This small victory was sadly short-lived; the voracious rumbling of my empty stomach interrupted, reminding me that the little I had eaten was now a thin crust along the planks of the loading dock, and I was beyond the point of starving.

Glancing around, I decided I had no option other than to raid the smuggling crates. If Fontaine had a problem with this, he was more than welcome to go fuck his undead self.

The first few crates only offered strange vials and injection devices. A dusty old syringe, lustrous in the low light of the hallway, beckoned to me. I could barely make out the label, which was slightly faded with the decay of passing time; it read "EVE". I picked it up and held it, admiring the pale, ghostly glow of its contents: a thick, syrupy blue substance.

I had seen these syringes quite frequently throughout the years of living in Rapture, though I knew vaguely of their purpose. The people I loved – stupid, perhaps, but human nonetheless - grew twisted and psychotic within the self-destructive grasp of its genetic counterpart, ADAM. Even the man I had adored, to whom I had been engaged – along a timeline of events akin to that of a horror movie – fell prey to the wanton lust of the unadulterated ego. Fire at the flick of his wrist, icy daggers stabbing from his tundra fingertips. Drunk on the fermented fruit of limitless power, he, like a microcosm of society, sold his soul to the devil [_and the devil was us all along_].

Irrevocably, he was torn from me and replaced with a deranged, vicious freak. I cannot bring myself to speak much more of it, so I won't; but the last I had seen of him, his body was swinging from the rafters of Apollo Square - the noose, at his own hands; the choice, at the beck and whim of his drooling insanity.

I did my damnedest to avoid it, as if it were some black plague,… _because it absolutely was_. Having no real use for it, I held onto the EVE syringe in hopes of potentially utilizing it as a tool of bartering at some point (should I actually encounter anyone with half a brain left in this goddamned graveyard).

My search was proving mostly futile, so I tumbled over several more crates, which broke apart into pieces after months of taking on rot. A large pile of hay accumulated as I dug, frustrated in finding little else.

As I had been half-expecting, the last crate I pried open was packed with food and booze. Luck was on my side for once. I tore open each package, trying to ignore my conscience [_survivor's guilt_] as it wrestled with my survival instinct [_gluttony_]. Ultimately, I knew whoever once laid claim to this stash was not coming back.

Hardly pausing to breathe, I inhaled every scrap of food I could find - potato chips, Pep bars, sardines, potted meat, crème-filled cakes; I would've eaten sugar-coated rocks and dirt if it meant muting the maddening clamor of my guts.

Normally I would make a light-hearted, self-depreciating fat joke here, but I had lost 34 pounds against my will since the city descended into civil war. It disturbs me to admit this, but the thought of cannibalism has reared its hideous head several times, mostly in the last few days (_or nights? What's the difference anymore?_).

To my dismay, the aching of hunger was replaced by the angry howl of confusion. This toxic concoction of foods, though filling as it were, initiated earthquakes as it arrived in the upper tier of my digestive tract. Though I regretted binging so ravenously only minutes ago, down here you do what you can with what you got.

I wiped my mouth on the torn, soaking sleeve of my shirt, trading crumbs for bloody smears. My appearance was fuck-all, I didn't bother looking into mirrors anymore; _no men will come calling, I look like perpetual shit, I'm going to die down here a hot fucking mess,… and no one will ever visit my grave._

I narrowed my eyes at the thought.

_Every mirror in the city is busted, anyway._

As I approached the door to where my device of escape awaited, a disembodied male voice floated up to me from out of nowhere. Its whisper surrounded me entirely and I held my breath; my heart stopped and seemed to have died in my ribcage.

"_No._"

A ghostly pause.

"_They're all dead._"

Now, solitude is my sole companion; the only other company I keep is that constant fucking dripping. So was I witnessing, like some supernatural record skipping, events from the recent past repeating? Had the space-time continuum experienced a glitch from all this cracked-out plasmid use? Was some small sliver of Rapture's history manifesting itself as residual energy?

The words winked in and out of existence, right before me, and they were not a product of my mind… _were they?_

I declined to pursue those thoughts down dark alleys.

Diverting my attention, I shoved hard against the door to the Bathysphere Station with all my might. After initially resisting, it swung open and released a pungent cloud of musty humidity.

Deep down - regardless of whatever stubborn denial I can conjure - I realize I am catching small sunspots of oncoming psychosis.

It's funny,… I always thought bullets or starvation would do me in, not my own mind. Yet here I stand, powerless, at the very threshold of my demise.


	6. Chapter 6

Once upon a time, the sound of flowing water was comforting and soothing - something that didn't grate on every last, shredded nerve. But that was eons ago, far away in another life. Automatic reactions supersede my newfound hatred for it: teeth gritting, sweat, fists unconsciously clenching. It really puts a new twist on your average garden-variety Chinese water torture.

With all these leaks and no one remaining to repair them, the city will inevitably drown and the sea will claim her as it rightfully should. But until then, I must listen to the painfully slow death of Rapture, and it breaks me a little more every day.

_Everything I knew, everyone I love, is __**DEAD**__. I wish I was too, but I'm too much of a chickenshit to complete the cycle._

My psyche descended once again into the depths of ugly thought – a movie reel of memories so hideous, even Steinman's scalpel couldn't make them more repulsive. Riots, stabbings, shootings, corpses hung throughout the trees of Arcadia, raging fires engulfing entire sections of the city; my family brutalized, my fiancée's suicide, so many of my neighbors just _disappeared_,.. how many of my friends had slaughtered one another, for no good reason at all?

_I didn't even have time to mourn them… _

Unwilling to continue entertaining these self-indulgent memoirs, I shook my head, as if it would shake the thoughts themselves away; but like dead bodies, I know they will find a way to float back to the surface eventually.

The vessel passed through a murky tunnel and all light ceased to exist. Submerged in shadow, the only evidence I was still moving was the dutiful humming of the bathysphere's engine.

The blackness all around me was like a womb, somewhere in-between birth and death, suspended above the pain of both. I took a moment to try and relax, focus on my breathing, and maybe even reflect on some heretical fucking reason to be thankful that I'm still alive.

Though I was able to calm and steady my breathing, I found little to be thankful for, and even less to look forward to.

The ocean floor reappeared in the submersible's windows as the tunnel shrank behind me. Far below, a Rosie was riveting new bolts into one leg of the incredible metal millipede that is the Rapture transit system. I sighed heavily, feeling as though the weight and pressure of the sea itself rested upon my narrow shoulders.

We slid past a handsome, decrepit old hotel sitting somberly in the opposing shadow of an adjacent high-rise. The curtains of a lavish ballroom had been spread open wide by a powerful surge of incoming water, revealing a New Year's Eve party within frozen forever in time. Cadavers bobbed and bumped against the black ceiling; I could see each pair of shoes, once polished and primed, now collecting algae and rot. Champagne glasses hung by the window as if stuck in an eternal toast – to success, to fortune,… _to the decadent dreams of a dead society._

The weight on my shoulders intensified and an even deeper sigh groaned out of my throat.

_What a fucking tragedy._

* * *

The bathysphere slowed as it arrived in the docking station. Gears cranked loudly, gritty and rusted, as the vessel came to rest in the loading area. I was greeted with the soft, ethereal purr of classical music - light and airy, almost whimsical in its oblivious naivety.

Clumsily, the door shuddered and slid open; I stepped up to the doorway and peered hesitantly out, anticipating hoards of splicers killing one another in an unbridled bloodbath free-for-all.

Only the sweet singing of violins replied to my silent inquisition; all else was quiet, still.

I did not trust this.

I crept out of the bathysphere and into the desolate lobby; a colossal plaque reading "Fort Frolic" announced where I had arrived. As was my new survival habit, I took a moment to meticulously comb over every corner of this new environment.

Moldy walls were lined with art-deco posters proudly boasting of Rapture's most glamorous events, symphonies, performances and (of course) advertising the ever-present plasmid. One poster in particular stuck out – it was elegantly splattered with blood and shredded in several places.

**The 1958 Rapture Masquerade Ball. **

_Those masks… __**THEM**__…._

I took a few steps forward to investigate; without warning, a massive spotlight switched on above me and then pointed downwards. Like a damn fool I flung my hands up in defense (as if that would actually stop, say, an oncoming rocket). The spot in which I stood was immersed in a hot flood of light.

Nothing happened. I waited.

"_Are you lost, little moth_?" a playful voice whispered over the PA system.

I was not under attack - rather, I was being… _welcomed_.

I cautiously lowered my hands and looked around, inspecting the room for the face behind the voice; I would not just yet, however, have the gruesome pleasure of meeting the governor.

"_You're a bit tardy to the party, little moth_," he cooed, "_there's no one left here but us ghosts_." The man's blasé laughter crackled over the old PA system, but surprisingly I did not found the sound displeasing. Though his tone put me at ease, I could almost hear the insanity oozing from his delicate soliloquy.

"Do you have any idea how to get out of here?" I asked, shifting anxiously from foot to foot. As much as I would have enjoyed having tea and a chat with the Mad Hatter of Rapture, an all-encompassing exhaustion was looming somewhere at the horizon of my will to keep moving; what was sure to follow was a bottomless black-out.

"Now, why would you want to be on your way when you've only just arrived? It's been so long since I had an audience… Come, come, make yourself at home," he gently insisted, and the doors to Fort Frolic swung open.

I squinted in the bright halo of the atrium's flashy marquees. Bulbs of all colors shone brilliantly along the dazzling Broadway-style billboards of every store and venue in the plaza. A torrential waterfall of seawater poured down from a giant crack in the glass of the arched ceiling and dribbled down a large, elegant staircase. Tuna, stingrays, sharks and marbled groupers passing overhead threw glistening shadows, distorted by the magnificent opulence of the skyline's light refraction, all across the floors and delicately-carved railings of Fort Frolic. For the time being, I was stricken immobile with wide-eyed, heart-stopping awe.

The stranger took notice of my fascination with these new surroundings and chuckled heartily, which elicited from the PA system a loud screech of feedback. Both noises triggered a frigid flux of chills all along my spine; something about this faceless man was unspeakably creepy.

"So, what brings you to my little corner of hell, little moth?" He asked, thoroughly amused.

"I'm trying to find a way out. Do you know the path which Jack Ryan took? _**Where is the exit?**__ I'm going to lose my goddamn mind…._" I rubbed my temples, trying to ignore the slow pull of sleep reeling me in like a dying fish on a dead man's hook. At least for the time being, I had discovered a place where my life might not be under constant threat every finite fucking second.

"Oh, tut tut - you would be in good company then, my dear," he chortled, and I could tell he was wearing a Cheshire grin. Bits and pieces of his words hung in the air against the gravity of my slipping consciousness and bounced repeatedly off my forehead - but nothing sank in. I blinked several times in rapid succession, each time seeing a little less of the physical world than the last.

"_I just… sleep_," I moaned in a pathetic little whine, more to myself than to my ubiquitous observer. The absurd grasp of exhaustion crept into my bones and there was little I could do to fight its onset; my legs wobbled and I suddenly bent to one knee. Everything swayed as if I was aboard the deck of a rapidly-sinking ship; I was witnessing the rugged threads of reality unraveling.

Before I could request the governor of Fort Frolic for a place to rest, the blackness reared up and consumed me; I abruptly met the floor, which was bitter cold, wet and uninviting - but the solid cracking of my skull against the sweet marble tiles gave me little to be concerned with for the next few hours.


	7. Chapter 7

Someone, somewhere was molesting the glorious hell out of a finely-tuned piano; but there were no haphazard key-strokes here - no manic, sloppy serenading of ebony and ivory. What little I could hear at first, cloudy and ethereal like wisps of a fleeting dream, was absolutely enchanting. My heart was soon vainly thumping along in its cadence, each beat desperately trying to keep up with the swift succession of one master composer's brilliant fingers. I was not even fully awake and already I was hypnotized.

Sensing a shadow hovering over me, I apprehensively opened one crusty, blood-shot eye as the blistering piano concerto climaxed - and then almost swallowed my own tongue.

An aging man's face - caked in thick white make-up, eyebrows thinly scribbled onto his furrowed forehead in black pencil, a slender, waxy mustache smiling up from his pursed mouth - looked down upon me. He had been watching me as I slept… or perhaps, was contemplating what to do with my corpse.

Without my consent, a startled gasp slipped out of me. His expression did not waver, nor did his train of thought. He was looking at me… _through me_.

"No, no… this won't do… _not at all_," he declared, his voice rising in a nervous pitch.

Whatever coward lies hiding within my breast tried to convince me to run – to take off screaming down the hallway and never look back. But I had done my fair share of running; I was growing quite weary of being a fucking weakling. If this man had any intention of killing me, he would have done so already. Insanity is purely a prerequisite for living down here (_and boy-o, was I soon to find out his professional credentials_) – however, this mysterious stranger was evidently still capable of some [albeit meager] rational thought.

The piano, remiss to our worldly interactions, sang in beautiful asymmetry behind and around us; it occurred to me then that it was just a recording, radiating like some burning sovereign sun out of the plaza's PA system. I felt a slight tinge of disappointment; I had always meant to catch a show at Fort Frolic, but those days and opportunities were long gone now.

So as not to startle this wild bunny, I very carefully pulled myself up from the spot in which I lay. With each muscle movement, the steady, rhythmic pangs of an oncoming migraine blossomed in my pre-frontal cortex.

We gazed at each other for some time, not speaking; he was still far away, frolicking in fields of feral, fucked-up thoughts. I, on the other hand, was trying to determine my next move – one that wouldn't get me strung up from the gallows, one that wouldn't inadvertently forfeit any chance I had of escaping.

"Is…" I began dubiously, "…._is there anything I can help you with_?"

If I offered assistance to this eccentric old chap, would he perchance let me leave alive? Would he guide me home,… _like a moth to the flame_?

He appeared taken aback by my question. A small kindling of excited fire twinkled like active galaxies in the corner of his eager eyes. "Why,…. yes, little moth, there is actually something for which your services could be rendered.

"How rude of me; my name is Sander Cohen," he proclaimed proudly and then bowed graciously. Dusting myself off, I stood up and extended my hand to shake his. I may have gestured too quickly for his liking; without warning, his eyes went crazy and he leapt backwards like a startled animal.

"_Shit! __**Fuck!**_ Sorry," I exclaimed and backed away. Clearly, the man was as unstable as a decaying radioactive isotope - and I was definitely going to get burned toying with his fire.

Cohen's appearance and demeanor seemed harmless enough, but I knew far better than to judge a man by his looks. Every single motherfucker left alive roaming the halls of the dead had blood on their hands – the game had changed, and it was now kill or be killed. Considering this little fact of life and his more-than-obvious lunacy, I knew he was yet another cunning creature of Rapture to truly fear.

He gradually relaxed, though he kept one curious eye poised on me - ever watching, ever mindful.

"_My… masterpiece_." Sander gestured to a well-lit stage where more than a half-dozen poor souls were carefully molded into the borders of a huge 4-paneled picture frame. Each plastered, rabbit-eared statue upheld a corner of the four frames, whereas each frame boasted an absolutely saturnine snapshot of a cadaver. Two of the subjects had been torched beyond recognition; one was naught more than a bloody human icicle; the last of the pictures was as interesting as it was perverse – a dead, butchered body slumped against a stripper's pole.

I studied the piece for some time, not quite sure what I was seeing - even less certain of my reaction to it. It was almost as if my brain, both enthralled and revolted by this captivating train wreck, was continually ingesting the same visual input as it was simultaneously puking it right back up - a sort of negative feedback loop, if you will. Somewhere in the depths of my homo-sapien consciousness, horror and revulsion were knee-deep in the throes of an orgiastic threesome with their old friend and morbid bedfellow, _curiosity_.

Sander's face had been watching mine, gauging for a reaction. I turned to look at him, finally prying myself away from the macabre grip of his life's work.

"It's…. it's fucking _mesmerizing_," I murmured, almost drooling on myself. Hopefully I did not come off as a total ass-kiss - or worse yet – _insulting_; I was, in fact, being fully honest.

A small smile flashed across his face. "You, little moth," he prattled, " … you yourself have the aura of an artist. I can _**smell it**_." He leaned in, sniffing at me like a rabid dog.

Another deer-in-the-headlights moment;_ just play it cool, asshole_, I thought to myself, trying to hide the fact that I was shaking like a leaf. I envisioned Cohen brandishing a fork and knife of pure, gleaming silver in anticipation of the last supper of my soul.

But just as quickly as his smile arrived, it vanished; Sander's expression then morphed into a frown so eerie and deranged, had I been the owner of a pair of testicles, they would have shriveled right up and crawled back into my abdomen.

"Now that it's complete, I…" He trailed off. His mustache twitched, as if it pained him to continue his confession. "I have stagnated; my artistic flow is a dried-up river. I have the oars, the vessel - but no water."

He began pacing, his eyes glazed over and distant (but not at all vacant). Forest fires were raging in the foothills of his mind – Cohen, spreading his love arbitrarily from a full canister of gasoline; I, standing timidly to the side with a lit match.

"This vision… it was so long ago. I thought you would fill the gap of that dream – but you, you're not what it needs. _**NO**_…. it needs a fresh body. A broken soul. _You_- "

Something dawned on me just then. My eyes wandered back to Cohen's center-stage masterpiece and glossed over each of the eight splicers cast within. Looking around the main foyer of the atrium, I took notice of several additional statues, each one fashioned in a different graceful posture, all bearing the same mark of death – a smile carved into every throat.

_I could have woken up dead,… suffocating under buckets of plaster… Yet I live to see another day, spared only by being denied Sander's exalted approval. _

The testicles I didn't have retreated further up into my torso.

"You can help me with something," he continued, still pacing hastily, "… something with which I've been struggling my whole _goddamned_ life." He stood before his magnum opus, hands clenched behind his back while I waited in awkward, uneasy silence.

Clearing my throat audibly, I approached him as one would cautiously approach a live, downed wire. I would have to try to keep Cohen at ground level as often as possible if I wanted to be admitted passage through his sacred sanctuary. Far be it for me to be so proud as to deny how desperately I needed an ally in this place; if it meant joining sides with the psychotic composer of Fort Frolic, then so be it.

"I can help you with whatever it is you need to do or find; just let me know what must be done," I proposed, psychologically tip-toeing around the smashed eggshells of his sanity.

A smile as equally creepy as his frown surfaced on his face. "Yes…. you, my prodigy,… _you will fly_! Those smug _**FUCKING**_ bastards have not yet seen what it is to soar," though the last of his prose descended into an unintelligible grumble.

Sander then whirled around unexpectedly and grabbed my hands, tuxedo tails a-flutter. "_**THESE HANDS!**_" he shouted at point-blank range. Had his words been bullets, I would have died a gory mess.

"These… are the hands… of an _**ARTIST!**_" His voice reverberated triumphantly across the plaza. Somewhere beyond the staircase, past the rows of record stores and empty theaters waiting for curtain call, a Big Daddy growled in warning.

What scared me most of all was not his unpredictable nature, nor Sander's easily-stoked temper; but rather, his insight. Back In life (when life meant _living_), I was no stranger to the blank, infinite possibilities of creation. Sketching, drawing, designing; I had written over 40 fictional stories and 300 poems - all too banal and cliché to publicly display outside the confines of my personal ledgers. Painting was my weakness - sculpture, not quite my forte; but give me a subject and I'll carve holes in the world to bring it into reality.

In him, I could see several glaring parallels; in him, past the vast wilderness of his neuroses, I could see _myself_. He was the rugged little artist in the corner of my mind - one lone light bulb buzzing overhead - always spilling himself, pouring himself, _stretching_ himself across the canvas of the psyche. He filled, with a nameless love and a frenzied obsession, every single thing he touched - _even the dead_.

Cohen's grip was soft - refined, even – but when that sonofabitch grabbed me, I was imbued with the purest form of raw energy - my feet, the grounders; my hands, the lightning rod. Electromagnetic power seemed to almost radiate from his skin; he had become nothing short of brilliant, and copious consumption of ADAM had only exacerbated his passion…. compelled to create, driven to destroy.

_Yet still, how could he have known?..._

He interrupted my bewilderment with more emphatic exasperation.

"**YOU** have suffered under the great burden that is your inner eye; **YOU** know what it means to writhe, like a cheap whore, in the arduous hours of giving birth to your ideas. And it is _**YOU**_ who is going to help me show these fools exactly who **SANDER **_**FUCKING**_**COHEN** really is!" he thundered excitedly.

_Bat-shit._

_**Fucking**__._

_**INSANE**__._

And for some reason, I loved this guy already.


	8. Chapter 8

I left that place a changed woman; I was no longer the sniveling little shit I had been when I had initially arrived. Perhaps some of Cohen's sadistic delirium had rubbed off on me; just as pain is weakness leaving the body, perhaps my many fears were in departure – _in order to make room for_ _madness_.

Cohen, as I was soon to learn, had an extensive, twisted history of seducing and deserting many a jilted lover, almost all of whom were men. (I don't know why he would tell me such a fucking thing, but hey, I suppose the guy didn't have anyone else to gossip to down here in his lonely fortress of solitude. Splicers are poor company at best and, more often than not, are terrible listeners.)

Was I becoming his… _friend_? _Confidant_? _Ally?_ Or was I just some murderous errand girl sent to fetch his old fuckbuddy?

Speaking of errands – the one on which I was sent was somewhat vague: I was supposed to track down and bring to him one such old flame, but whether or not that flame was still burning or had since been reduced to cold embers he did not say. I didn't bother asking what his intentions were beyond this much-anticipated rendezvous; part of me (that new, blood-thirsty bitch with whom I was just now getting acquainted) wanted to know in all its grisly glory, but most of me trembled and felt sick in wondering what he had planned. He had, after all, instructed me to 'drag his beautiful, evil carcass' back to the stage where we first met.

The halls of Fort Frolic were just as dark and soggy as the rest of the city, but here my heart felt lighter (and not simply as the result of now having someone I could potentially call on as an ally). Fort Frolic was in and of itself charming – bewitching, even. The bustling crowds were gone, the final act had closed each theatre, and spotlights will continue to burn on empty stages until they sputter and die from old age; but the excited pulse of Rapture's cultural apex remained. Each gallery and intersection was shrouded in high-voltage shadow. Wandering the mall and creeping around each bend, I almost expected to see lines of well-dressed dames clutching elegant handbags and sashaying glamorously along the sides of many a dapper, tuxedoed gentleman. White dress gloves, jade cigarette holders, rose lapels and pearls - I could even pick up on the faint, stale scent of cigars intertwined with cologne and perfume.

Memories came rushing back; I remembered this gorgeous little black dress I used to own… I would have worn it here, strutting my stuff like an undersea empress. I can almost see its silky fabric swaying gently against my hips, rippling luxuriously as I flutter down the busy promenade to the rhythm of catchy jazz beats. The music here was a powerful current, not simply a stream; creamy aural tides like caramel would woo and carry along the living buzz of human activity, its honeyed hue a subtle nod to the stunning trim and gold crown molding of every resplendent archway.

Nostalgia, then, became the dull throb of heartache. Knowing I had missed out on something so much greater, so much larger than myself only added to the burden of grief I will carry within me forever like an anchor.

A resonant migraine in my left temple regained the reigns of my attention. I kept walking, gazing listlessly at the ground passing below me while I massaged my scalp.

_Fuck_,… I muttered softly, stumbling along…

….stumbling right into the back of a bloody little girl in a blue and white dress. Not missing a beat, she shrieked from the bottom of her lungs.

"**_Threetoomany threetoomany threetoomany!_**"

My migraine flared angrily in reply, hot and bright like a supernova; I was temporarily blinded.

The Big, Bad Daddy was lingering right at the entrance to the grand foyer. I had not seen either of them until it was too late - his eyes instantly went red and he raised his grenade-launcher in my direction.

**_FUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCKKK_**.

Yes, this time I was, in fact, **_FUCKED_**. There were no riled-up splicers to whom I could divert this big bastard's rage - no sudden, gaping wounds in the walls of Rapture into which I could slither like a scum-covered sewer rat. I backed away onto the balcony overlooking Cohen's master stage and nearly walked right off the crumbling veranda.

His arm reared back - he was launching a proximity mine in my face just as I made the decision to shove myself off the balcony. I tumbled backwards to the ground level, flailing my arms wildly the entire way. I'm quite certain it was a sight for sore eyes.

My body slammed into the cold, hard floor aside the staircase; the proximity mine sailed above and past me, landing adjacent to the center stage. As it clicked onto the ground, a red bullseye formed around it in a wide radius.

Thankfully, the chorus of cracks and popping sounds which came out of me upon impact were not of the bone-breaking variety - though much to my anticipated chagrin, a cocoon of concentrated, directionless agony enveloped me. My head became its own heartbeat; I couldn't move or breathe.

"I wouldn't advise dancing the dance of death with those stinking monsters, _little moth_; they can fly, but you have yet to test your wings,.." Cohen's silky monologue once again seeped from the PA speakers.

Massive earth-quaking footsteps shook the entire upper tier and every wall of the plaza. A thick shower of dust, paint chips and cement trickled down like fallout. Playing dead was not going to work - **_it was coming for me_**.

An obnoxious creaking noise in a far corner of the gallery drew my focus away from the impending doom; I averted my palpitating gaze towards the back of the atrium, though I could barely perceive the shape of anything. What I had been hearing was the thin glass cover of a stone pedestal, on which sat a brightly-glowing plasmid bottle, slowly rising.

Sander Fucking Cohen was offering me the same wildly-addictive genetic glorification that Frank Fucking Fontaine had once tried to sell me. Was it finally time to accept that I was not going to leave Rapture alive unless I drank the kool-aid?

**_NO_**.

_Remember what it did to Anthony… to your friends…. **you can't ever forget that**. Don't let them die in vain._

Before I could continue to argue with myself, the Big Daddy unleashed his phenomenal sonar roar. Beneath me, the surface rattled like a loose screen door; within me, low-frequency vibrations pummeled my organs mercilessly, so much so that I threw up a little.

In retrospect, the old me might have remained in this fetal position and given up, damned to die a puny little _parasite_. The new me, however, was finally learning to walk that very narrow line between the land of mortals and the realm of souls. The Grim Reaper was hovering at the gates of my release, but I was not about to give that unholy asshole the pleasure of meeting me just yet. After wiping the residual upchuck from my mouth, I hobbled onto all fours and forced myself to my feet.

The Bouncer was closing in on me while his Little Sister cheered him on excitedly in the background.

"Go on, **_take it!_**" Sander coaxed, louder this time. My primal instinct, howling to be heard above the furious discord of war, implored me to surrender my moral high-ground and listen to the goddamn madman already. So I abided.

I sprinted towards the stone pedestal and grabbed the plasmid off, holding it up to the lights of Sander's stage. It shone like a flawless ruby in my hand and twinkled with ominous promise. The reflection of my weathered face on the tumbler's glass caught me off guard; this was the last time I would ever really see myself, as myself.

From the thick black cover of shadow, a small syringe rolled off and hit the floor as if to remind me of the sand quickly dwindling in the hourglass of my existence. I snatched it up just as the charging beast crested the curvature of the staircase.

"_Time to dance the dance of death_," I murmured through a snide, shit-eating grin, and watched as the bubbling red ooze filled the empty chamber of the syringe. Fear tends to compound on itself the longer one hesitates, but to my good fortune there was no time left to waste with doubt - the Big Daddy had reached Cohen's stage and was seconds from snapping my ass in half like an old twig.

I stabbed my forearm with the needle and jammed down on the syringe. The vicious palm of the color red reached up and slapped me **_hard_** across the face; I crumpled to my knees in a wailing, crying, yelping mess as tears gushed freely down my cheeks. Four searing currents of gene-bending misery railed through every one of my limbs; a fifth fork arched upward and outward, straight through the crown of my skull. I trembled violently like a gnat in an industrial-strength bug-zapper - even my thoughts had become electrified.

_Will my eyes explode right out of my head? Did I just piss my pants? **What the fuck is that burning smell?**_

Flickering infernos of fire tore up and down the soft, milky flesh of my forearms, leaving fatty burnt-tissue deposits in its wake. Molten lava exuded in a thick, pussing dribble from the raw tips of my fingers, defying everything I ever thought I knew of physics and biology. To my agonized surprise, an army of newborn flames licked devilishly up towards my mouth, begging for a quick kiss.

Cohen had bestowed upon me the almighty power of **_fire_**. I gaped at my hands - appalled, elated, _screaming_.

The Big Daddy hurtled towards me at sub-sonic speeds; without even thinking of what I was hoping to achieve, I willed a surging stream of spewing fire in his direction from my hands (_my new blow-torches)_. As I had been hoping in those monumental nanoseconds, the Bouncer immediately combusted.

Fire would not be this behemoth's undoing - I knew goddamn well that I couldn't kill him - but it certainly slowed him down. While he flailed amongst a scalding blanket of fire, I scrambled to the back of the hall and threw myself against the art-deco double doors. A wafting trail of smoke I left behind reeked of charred and burning skin.

Outside the Gentleman's restroom was an illuminated First Aid machine, under which sat a gruesome victim of suicide; what was left of the back of the guy's head was splattered in stringy gobs all along the wall. Both he and I were oblivious to the jagged lines of garbage fires raging all throughout the first floor waiting area. As if to further exemplify the person I had since abandoned, what caught my eye was not the bold, tragic way in which this man died - it was only the shotgun and pack of shells resting neatly in his lap which concerned me.

"Took the easy way out, friend?" I questioned the cadaver in a whisper as I knelt down beside him.

_Here I am, talking to the dead. I guess I better start making friends… we will soon be neighbors._

While the sinister seconds of my internal clock ticked away – those ruthless little reminders of my humble mortality - I loaded the shotgun as quickly as I could manage; shaking, sweaty hands did little to help my cause. These particular bullets (as I was soon to realize) were highly-charged electric buckshot and would guarantee me an awesome advantage over any opponent, whether made of meat or metal.

As my silhouette danced along the old walls to the capricious tempo of billowing flames, I cocked the shotgun and stood to face my destiny, which was probably buried under the incredible foot of one ultra-pissed-off Bouncer.

"_You are a survivor, little moth_," Sander gushed from his omnipotent speaker system. "Rapture will forsake you, as it has us all,… _as it did me_… now take your weapons and **PAINT!** **_Paint yourself a masterpiece fitting of the fucking devil himself!_**"

The confused stomping of boots just past the double-doors before me gave off the impression of continuous rolling thunder, drawing ever near. I braced myself for the oncoming impact.

Slow-motion replays wouldn't do justice to how time sort of melted on itself at that instant. The doors didn't quite explode open – rather, they disintegrated around the hulking frame of the Big Daddy as he burst forth into the room. All at once, a fantastic dump of adrenaline and terror simultaneously poured out of my synapses and inundated every neuronal pathway in the quivering mass of frightened jelly that was my brain.

"**_HHHRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!_**"

Two charged shotgun shells pumped out of the chamber and disappeared into the Big Daddy Bouncer. A groan of excruciation as loud and intense as the lightning itself held me where I stood - no choice but to watch as he, helpless and immobilized, jerked awkwardly in place. Bright blue electric bolts arched and curved gracefully over the entire steel surface area of his armor, enveloping him in an electromagnetic corona.

"Daddy! _Nooooooo!_" His Little Sister wailed from the second floor and reached vainly through the bars of the balcony railing for her bonded father. Her tiny grasping hand found only empty air.

Just as I was beginning to feel sorry for the big lug, Daddy finally regained control of his body and lurched for me. I rolled low and to the left, tumbling right into the iridescent belly of the bathroom garbage fire. My clothes and hair, had they not still been damp with seawater, would have most certainly ignited otherwise. A poorly-executed somersault somehow rolled me back onto my feet, so I turned to flee - but never got that far.

The outside world vanished for a fraction of a fraction of a second, everything suddenly overtaken by nothing. Any sign of the third dimension ceased to exist as rooms passed me in a watercolor motion-blur. I had no clue what was happening until the exact moment I crashed through the restroom wall and took down a whole row of stalls. Twin geysers of water rose out of the shattered remains of two filthy toilets; I tried to lift my arms and shield myself but could not, as both had been wrenched from their sockets. Twisted and tugging on one weakened hinge, the last stall wall standing tore from its post and collapsed on top of me, smashing my nose across my cheekbone. Blood ran uninhibited all across my lips and down my neck. Unable to move, I slipped gladly into the peaceful miasma of shock.

Big Daddy had slammed me clear through the wall and into the Men's Restroom. Somehow I had lived to tell of it, but with two arms now rendered useless, I would not live to finish my story.

Stars were in orbit around my head, but I was probably the only one who saw them; bright flashes pulsed in and out like miniature quasars as they passed by my periphery. I was an astronaut with only one friend, who was in all actuality an enemy_ – _whom, against my will, kept me tethered to this realm of hell by the unforgiving umbilical cord of heightened perception: the all-too familiar sound of moving water. Leaks dripping, pipes overflowing, infantile currents sloshing softly against the grimy tiled walls - it was all I could hear, albeit light years away.

Streaks of running colors finally tidied themselves into a flat, uniform plane. As the minutes passed, depth returned to my sight - and with it came the pain.

Just then, a rhythmic clicking pattern dipped in and out of my awareness; even if I knew the source of the intrusive sound, there was next to nothing I could do about it. My focus drunkenly stumbled from one beguiling stimulus to the next. Musty-smelling water lapped around the slabs of concrete jutting into the cradle of my spine; one by one, I was soon able to feel every single point, from numb and dull to dagger sharp. Someone's eyeballs rolled around merrily in my aching face-holes; I vaguely wondered if they were mine.

A welcome distraction of unexpected jazz music whispered sweetly into one ear, then the other before retreating back into the muffled din of returning to earth. I tried to follow it, to pinpoint from whence it came, but couldn't bring myself to really give a shit about anything for more than two and a half seconds at a time. The pain simply wouldn't allow it.

While my head lolled around between both dislocated shoulders, a phantom hand tenderly caressed my right cheek; it was no spectral touch, only a snotty glob of tissue seeping steadily out of my crushed nose. Inside the clutch of physical trauma, I bobbed along a stream of delirious ponderings, none of which touched upon the whereabouts of one Big, Bad Daddy.

**_Click-click-click-click_**.

That high-pitched pattering of metal on porcelain.

A sudden splash kicked up a shallow wave of water against my soaked shoes. Any attempts to see were premature and failed; my two and a half seconds were up rather quickly, so I closed my eyes.

Someone stood in the ankle-deep bathroom puddle and watched me in bitter silence. I was too inundated with injuries at this point to worry about it. It would all be over soon…

"_I spy, on this little fly, something ending in **TEARS**._"

Disembodied, psychotic laughter drifted in from the hallway.

_Oh, good,…_ _more guests_.

The observer still did not speak. I opened my eyes again.

Hunched over and coated in Sander's fabulous brand of hand-crafted plaster, a splicer's dead eyes watched me with lethal curiosity. He was positively luminescent, glowing like an _angel_ - a stark white blob against a backdrop of blacks and greens vigorously vying for domination.

Just outside the restroom, an alarm began blaring. Around its foundation rose an accompaniment of the traditional racket of combat – angry shouts, hectic scrambling, fresh holes being blasted in the walls, a high-frequency whine followed by the easily-recognizable pangs of automated gunfire. The Big Daddy tore through their collaborative sonata and bellowed like all hell, drowning out every other noise.

"_Do you see, little moth, how he hogs your spotlight?!_" Sander spoke lovingly, _defensively_, like a father to his child. "Don't let that blundering fool steal your thunder! **UP! _UP ON YOUR FEET!_**"

"_Hhhhhnnngggggggg_," was the only response I could cultivate.

Chunks of what remained of the bathroom's outer wall blasted inward, enlarging the hole my body had just engraved two-fold. A flying corpse summoned by the mighty fist of the Bouncer hurtled into my messy pile of twisted metal and concrete. One hundred and thirty-six pounds of dead human meat landed on top of me; my right shoulder popped back into place as a result of the force of impact, but my left was still a dangling slab of unresponsive flesh. Jagged mountain peaks of cinderblock eagerly embraced my spine as it smashed downward from the new weight.

The spider splicer was gone - simply vanished. I hadn't even seen it leave - I could only assume he had crawled back up into the gaping crater of the second for floor, directly above.

Alarms continued to wail all throughout the atrium; flying turret bots hovered outside the bathroom wall's brand new doorway and fired relentlessly to the right. I could vaguely make out the dark form of another splicer struggling to fend off both the Bouncer and Rapture security.

"**_I SHIT BIGGER THAN YOU!_**" A distinctly masculine voice smugly announced.

More bullets flew. The body I had been watching dropped anticlimactically, silenced forever.

All local threats neutralized, the turrets' automatics powered down to the grating tune of a low, distinct drone. Now nothing more than floating mechanical bumblebees, they departed from the murder scene and disappeared from sight. I could hear the Big Daddy groaning and stirring restlessly just outside in the waiting room; he lingered in search of his last victim – _me_ – but was debating in that prehistoric intellect of his if I was worth any more of his time.

Eternities passed on the atoms of tear-shaped droplets spewing from the broken pipe of stall #2. Big Daddy's robotic, calculating pacing eventually ventured off into one of the saturated passageways of Fort Frolic; any remaining signs of his location vanished into that omnipresent melody of moving water.

He left in search of vents, in search of his bloody little girl in the blue and white dress.


End file.
